'No friend of mine,' returned Lord Frederick, using the gestures of drying his fine blue eyes, 'shall ever again be consulted. Could I have foreseen your cruel treatment, never would I have put it in the power, even of my nearest relative, to injure you by publishing the hopes you had given.'
The hint, conveyed in these words, was not lost upon me. I concluded, that Lord Frederick had thought himself authorised to talk of the encouragement he had received. Our sense of impropriety is rarely so just as to gain nothing from anticipating the judgment of our fellow-creatures; and the levity which I had practised as an innocent trifling, took a very different form, when I saw it by sympathy, in the light in which it might soon be seen by hundreds. The folly into which I had been seduced by malice, vanity, and the love of amusement, would stand charactered in the world's sentence, as unjustifiable coquetry. Viewed in its consequences, as ruinous to the peace of a heart that loved me, I myself scarcely bestowed upon it a gentler name.
Confused, perplexed, and distressed, not daring to meet the eye of the man whom I had injured, I sat looking wistfully towards the door, more eager to escape from my present embarrassment than able to provide against the future. Lord Frederick instantly saw his advantage. 'I have wronged you, my heavenly Ellen,' he cried, throwing himself in rapture at my feet. 'I see that, upon reflection, you will yet allow my claim. How could I suspect my dear, generous Miss Percy of trifling with the fondest passion that ever warmed a human breast!'
I involuntarily recoiled, for I had never been less tenderly disposed towards Lord Frederick than at that moment. 'Really, my Lord,' I said, 'even if I could return all this enthusiasm, which indeed I cannot, I should give a poor specimen of my generosity by consenting to involve you in the difficulties which might be the consequence of disobliging my father.'
Lord Frederick cursed wealth in the most disinterested manner imaginable,--swore that 'the possession of his adorable Ellen was all he asked of Heaven,'--and fervently wished, that 'the splendour of his fortune, and the humbleness of mine, had given him an opportunity of proving how lightly he prized the dross when put in balance with my charms.' Though the loftiness of this style was too incongruous with Lord Frederick's general manner to excite no surprise, I must own, that it awakened not one doubt of his sincerity,--for what will not vanity believe? The more credit I gave his generosity, the more did I feel the injustice of my past conduct, yet the more painful it became to enter upon explanation; and I was not yet practised enough in coquetry to suppress the embarrassment which faltered on my tongue, as I told Lord Frederick, that 'I was sorry--very sorry, and much astonished; and that I had never suspected him of allowing such a romantic fancy to take possession of his mind; that my father's determination must excuse me to his Lordship and to the world, for refusing to sanction his hopes.'